


The Ties That Bind

by deathmallow



Series: The Long Road Home [1]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, OCs - Freeform, Pre-50th Games, Pre-Canon, Seam kiddies, That One With Haymitch's Girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2012-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the LJ Girl on Fire Ficathon for the prompt, <i>haymitch + mr everdeen + mr hawthorne, growing up seam</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ties That Bind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [electrumqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/gifts).



Jonas Hawthorne knew there were things about growing up Seam that nobody else, even the merchies, could easily understand. It was poor and they were proud and too often it was lousy in so many ways but you were never, ever, ever alone for it. So that wasn’t so bad. If you needed medicinal herbs for a cough or some berry jam for a little treat for your kid’s birthday, the community of neighbors usually found a way to make it happen. Besides, this was coal country and life was harsh and disaster never hit them only lightly. Death darkened a lot of doors when something went amiss in the mines so they all had to be there for each other, for widows and widowers and kids who’d lost a mother or father. The next time it might be them.

In the Seam there was this peculiar system of debts where for help given the giver tended to not keep track, but the recipient knew precisely what they owed and would always give it back in some way. For a place that hadn’t much money to claim, barter and debts of honor were usually their coin of choice, and everyone carefully tracked their own as close any store of gold coins.

Growing up Seam meant fighting an ever-losing battle to keep things clean of the coal dust that was on the wind and in the shoe treads and the creases of the skin of the miners. It meant your ma scrubbing your mouth out with nasty lye soap when you cussed. It meant your blood beating to the rhythm of the fiddle at weddings and festivals as you danced and laughed and forgot your troubles for a night. It meant being both terrified and relieved to turn twelve so you could sign up for tesserae and help out the family but you might get reaped. It meant absolutely living by “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.” 

Well, of course, there was a fifth way a few of them chose to help make ends meet. “Find a way around the rules”. The current Head was so lazy it seemed like you could cross the fence in broad daylight in front of him. Jonas and his ma slipped through one Sunday when he was eight and she started to teach him everything she knew about fishing. Never mind it was against the rules. So long as the Peacekeepers were sitting with their thumbs up their asses about it, no reason to not help feed his family. 

Soon enough he’d met Burdock Everdeen out there with his dad, making the first shaky attempts at drawing a bow. Later Briar Wainwright was there with her auntie learning about all the edible plants. Then finally they met Haymitch Abernathy carefully setting a few snares out and he wasn’t there with any kind of family.

Haymitch was the smartass in their class, and one of those boys from the desperate part of the Seam. His clothes were always faded and thin and patched. His pa, as Jonas learned from overhearing his parents, had been a drunk and not taken care of his family like he ought even before he died in the mines when Haymitch was three. After that Haymitch’s ma started to go to the Peacekeepers after her shift in the mines and even if he hadn’t understood then what that meant he was thirteen now and he got it, and he felt sorry for Mrs. Abernathy. It explained why Haymitch’s baby brother Ash had hair that proved dark brown in sunlight rather than true Seam black.

He’d made that remark only once last year when he was pissed off at Haymitch mouthing off and Haymitch punched him so hard he ended up on the ground gasping, and then Haymitch refused to talk to him for two weeks. Jonas knew he was hardly the first kid that got punched by Haymitch on Ash Abernathy’s behalf. That too was growing up Seam. You looked after your own fiercely and didn’t hesitate to put anyone in their place who went after them.

So Haymitch joined them, and he taught them the snares he was learning from old Callum the butcher. The four of them worked as a team, dividing up the take each day. Once the littles got just a bit older they’d start teaching them too: his sister Lorna, Briar’s sister Hazelle, and Haymitch’s brother Ash. Burt was an only child, all his siblings dead as babies or as little kids.

Jonas had swiped a half-full bottle of his pa’s white liquor from the cupboard this morning, just out of curiosity. Pulling it from his backpack now, he shook it and grinned at them. Wiping the top with his shirttail, he took a swig, though even the fumes made his eyes water. When it hit his stomach he felt like when Haymitch had punched him in the gut. Gasping, he held it out now to Burt first. “Only take a bit. It’s strong and if we drink too much he’ll notice and he’ll beat my ass.”

Burt grinned at him and took a swig, sputtering and choking on it. Haymitch next. “Careful there Hay, it might be too much for your skinny ass to handle,” Jonas mocked him. Haymitch was still the smallest of the three boys by an inch or so. 

Haymitch casually flipped him the bird with one hand even as he took a sip with the other, and handed it back to Jonas, wiping his mouth on his faded, patched sleeve. “That stuff’s awful,” he said, then handed it over to Briar. Then he grinned. “Keeps you nice and toasty though. Too bad it’s June.”

Briar rolled her eyes at him and took her own sip, not dainty and girl-like, but a swig like she’d watched them do. She ended up choking. “Bri? You OK?” Haymitch asked anxiously, a hand on her shoulder.

Jonas and Burt exchanged glances and smirked a bit, rolling their eyes. Yep. Haymitch was getting sweet on her. Briar eventually took a deep breath and nodded, handed the bottle back to Jonas. “I think my ma could use that to scrub the floors,” she offered with a sheepish grin. They all snickered at that.

“Reaping Day next week,” Burt said softly in a way that made Jonas want to take another sip of the liquor and another after that. They’d all come through just fine last year. But getting reaped as a thirteen was just as bad as twelve. Nobody under fifteen had ever won the Games, period, and the only victor from Twelve had been Nualla Clearly way back when and she’d been eighteen.

The thought of his name getting called, of having to go on the train with Honoria Delight to meet some Capitol mentor who’d already written him off as hopelessly bound to go die in the arena, scared him more than just about anything. More than the prospect of the mines when he turned eighteen. “Maybe this’ll be the year. I mean, if they give us a wilderness, maybe some of us have a chance...we’re not the only ones out here finding food.” 

“The Careers just get all the goodies from sponsors anyway. The rules favor ‘em,” Haymitch said, tapping his fingers on his knees thoughtfully. He gave a sarcastic laugh. “But hey, maybe if the arena’s a coal mine...” That was Haymitch all over, dealing with it by making fun of it. 

“If it’s a coal mine it ain’t any use to us because we’re too little to go down the mines and learn how to handle ourselves. But at least it doesn’t favor them over us,” Briar said. That was Briar all over, dealing with it by being fairly realistic.

“If you get reaped you know we’ll look after them,” Burt promised him softly. That was Burt all over, cutting right to the real problem but dealing with it calmly and thoughtfully.

Haymitch nodded, because even if he was a smartass he was still loyal as anything. “Yeah. Shit. Let’s just hope it’s not one of us three and Briar here.”

“Don’t worry,” Jonas said, deliberately teasing him, “we’d all do our best to look after your girlfriend in the arena, Hay.”

“Shut up, asshole.” Haymitch’s grey eyes snapped with temper and he threw a chestnut at him. “She’s our friend, not my girlfriend!” After they all got done snickering at his obvious discomfort, they sat there and took a couple more pulls on the bottle, agreed again that it was awful. “We’ve all got someone to leave behind,” Haymitch ventured, calmer now. “But yeah, we’ll stick together for whoever gets reaped if it comes to it. Look after their people.”

“Seams do that,” Briar murmured thoughtfully.

“What?” Jonas shot her a look.

The corner of her mouth tipped up in a smile and for a split second Jonas could see why Haymitch was starting to fall for her as more than a friend. “That’s because you pack of idiots don’t sew.”

“We ain’t girls,” Burt pointed out the obvious.

“Yeah, no kidding, Burt, I didn’t ever notice that when we were swimming.” They cracked up again as Burt blushed and grinned sheepishly. “No, see. It’s like this. A seam’s a crack in the earth with coal, sure. But it’s...it’s where the stitches bring stuff together too. Where you pull all those bits of fabric that were separate and bind ‘em up as one thing.”

He had never thought about it like that, of course, because sewing was a girls’ thing. But now that he heard that Jonas liked it, because anyone who looked could see all the stitches that made their Seam that kind of seam too, its thousands of people all pulled together as one strong quilt.

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt is here: http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html?thread=711524#t711524


End file.
